Tuesday, 30 October 2012

I’ve been thinking a lot about stances recently. I like
to see good stances: correct feet positioning, strong bend of the correct knee
(or knees), correct weight distribution, good back posture, head held up
looking forward etc. Good stances look strong and stable.

Beginners find stances difficult to master; they
generally lean too much with their upper torso, don’t bend their knees enough,
have their feet in a line, have incorrect weight distribution or look down at
the floor. I’ve been there; it’s hard to get it right or for it to feel
natural. It takes a long time and a lot of practice to get stances right and
even longer to get the transitions from stance to stance smooth and quick.

A lot of people would argue that stances are for
beginners or that they slow you down or are just too unnatural to be useful in
real self-defence situations. I would beg to differ.

Stances are an essential part of achieving economy of
movement when doing self-defence. Economy of movement is essential if you are
to move swiftly around your opponent, getting yourself into advantageous positions
to apply a technique, unbalance them or evade a strike. Good footwork is
essential to achieving this; if you teeter around your opponent with lots of
small steps, getting your legs crossed and generally wrong footing yourself you
are likely to come a cropper.

Good use of stances helps you to:

…Shift your weight smoothly and quickly from one leg to
the other as required.

…Unbalance your opponent either by directly using the
stance to destabilise a balance point e.g. placing your knee directly behind
theirs using a zenkutsu dachi (forward stance) or shiko dachi (sumo or horse
stance) or more indirectly by using weight transference e.g. grabbing them and
stepping back into a kokutsu dachi (back stance) or neko ashi dachi (cat
stance).

…Quickly put yourself in the most advantageous and
stable position to execute a restraint, takedown or throw.

…Move out of the way quickly and effortlessly if
required.

Zenkutsu Dachi
(Forward stance)

Karate pays a lot of attention to stances. Most
karateka will have spent many hours of their training going up and down the
dojo in shiko dachi or neko ashi dashi with sensei picking up on the smallest
postural transgression –“bend your knee more”, “stick your bottom in”, “turn
your back foot in more”, “turn your back foot out more”, “put your weight back
more”, “put your weight forward more”…….

It can all seem so picky sometimes and people will
question the wisdom of needing to be so precise with your footwork and
postures. After all, if you are attacked would it matter if you weren’t in the
perfect cat stance?

Well, yes it would matter if cat stance was integral to
the technique you were trying to execute on your assailant. If your technique
depended on you suddenly shifting your weight backwards, pulling your opponent
off balance whilst allowing your front foot to follow through quickly with a
swift snap kick and then be able to spring forward off the back leg to land a
punch; then being able to instantly get into a perfect cat stance may be
crucial. Failure to achieve it may leave you unable to pull your opponent off
balance and with too much weight on your front leg you won’t be able to kick
effectively either and if your back leg is too straight you may not be able to
spring forward for that punch – that could all lead to disaster!

Stances are more than just good footwork, they involve
the whole body. Good upright posture is crucial to a good stance. Without good
posture you cannot engage the core muscles properly and without the core
muscles engaged you cannot get any power in your strikes. Also, with poor, bent
over posture you are liable to lose your own balance and be easily pulled over
by your opponent.

Stances aren’t always an integral part of a technique;
sometimes the situation may require you to be lighter and quicker on your feet.
Evasion may be more important than getting a technique on your opponent. The art
of tai sabaki (body movement) is an exercise in good stance work, except this
time the stances are higher and lighter allowing quicker movements. Tai sabaki
still involves attention to posture, feet positioning, weight transference and
good transitioning so it is still stance work even if you don’t choose to call
it that.

Shiko Dachi
(Horse or sumo stance)

I really feel that we neglect stance training at our
peril. Without good stances our techniques will be weak and our movements clumsy.
When you watch a senior black belt in action the thing that really stands out
more than anything else is the way they move – it is precise and effortless.
This is because of their use of stances; they always put their feet in exactly
the right place with their weight distributed correctly and their posture
upright and it all flows so smoothly and naturally.

So if your own or your student’s stances are poor and
their movements clumsy get back to some formal stance training – up and down
the dojo until their thighs ache; you’re actually doing them a big favour….

Friday, 19 October 2012

I read a blog article recently that suggested that the
way we respond to our training partners in the dojo reflected the way we
behaved towards others in our everyday lives. Here’s a quote from the article:

“It’s interesting to train with people in the dojo – in
time you can see the connection between their style of body movement (“taijutsu“) and their personal style of interacting with others
outside the dojo. Those who engage with you as a training partner, giving you a
realistic attack, going neither limp nor overly tense and rigid the instant
that you start applying the technique, are often the ones that you will see
actively engaging outside of the dojo as well, taking on responsibilities, not
shying from making decisions and commitments. On the other hand, dojo training
partners who try to thwart you by not letting you apply the technique
correctly, jumping away unrealistically early, falling over when you didn’t do
anything, flinching away when you haven’t done anything, quitting their own
technique before it’s complete – these people are often the ones outside of the
dojo who are afraid of commitment, flaky, indecisive, escapist, melodramatic or
passive-aggressive.”

This is an interesting idea; let’s face it we’d all
like to think of ourselves as the former person rather than the latter; though
I suspect the degree of correlation between ‘dojo Joe’ and ‘everyday-life Joe’
is probably not as consistent as this author suggests. Or is it?

We like to argue about whether martial arts training
reveals character or develops it. The idea purported above suggests that
character is revealed in the dojo rather than developed: the person who can’t
commit to things in everyday life won’t commit to a technique in the dojo (e.g.
won’t attack properly or won’t commit to being thrown); the person who is
indecisive in life will also be indecisive in the dojo (e.g. hesitates to
choose an appropriate technique) whereas the person who in life is confident
and self-disciplined will bring those same qualities to the dojo (e.g. will
work hard, focus well and defend and attack with confidence).

Is it that straight forward? Is it possible that some
people may be very confident, successful and committed in their everyday lives
but be a little fearful and reticent in the dojo – afraid of hurting themselves
or others? Or, be rather timid and under-achieving in their private lives but
come alive in the dojo because they are comfortable with the people they mix
with there?

If it’s true that people bring the same characteristics
to the dojo that they display in everyday life then is it possible that those
characteristics can be changed/developed in the dojo and then transferred back
to everyday life?

I have more questions than answers here but my own
personal viewpoint is that to a great extent people do display similar
characteristics inside the dojo as they do outside. I know that I am pretty
much the same person inside the dojo as outside and I don’t feel my fundamental
character has changed much over the last 5 years that I have been doing martial
arts.

What do you think? Does the way we train in the dojo
reflect the way we behave outside in our everyday lives?

Wednesday, 10 October 2012

The warm up is such a fundamental part of exercising
that I think it is easy to overlook the exact purpose of doing it or what exercises
constitute the best warm up activity. I even have my doubts as to whether a
warm up is really necessary.

Last week we started the class with breakfalls. No
warm-up. I was dubious about the wisdom of this at first, thinking that we
might get some injuries but I actually enjoyed breakfalling from cold – it warmed
me up much more quickly than a usual warm-up and I felt ready for action all
session. No one suffered any injuries or pulls. So did the breakfalling
constitute the warm-up?

Last night I arrived late for class and the other
students had already done their warm-up. I arrived just as the class was about
to start a round of breakfalls, so I just did them – from cold again. They went
well and I felt fine – I felt warmed up
and ready for action. So does this mean that breakfalling was my warm up
again?

Usually our warm-up consists of either running around
the hall for a couple of minutes or jogging on the spot, star jumps, press-ups,
burpees, sit-ups and straight leg raises followed by a few dynamic stretches.
This lasts between 5-10 minutes. Occasionally we warm-up with some fast kihon
moves or sparring moves followed by stretching. When I used to do my kobudo
classes the warm-up was similar.

When my husband used to belong to a jujitsu club the
warm-up lasted for 45 minutes and consisted of many static stretches as well as
a cardio-vascular warm-up.

Whichever way I have been asked to warm up I have not
suffered any injuries as a result of not
warming up sufficiently. However, I usually feel more ready for action if I
have ‘warmed-up’ doing the activity I am participating in (i.e. karate
moves/breakfalling) than if I have warmed up doing ‘warm-up exercises’ (i.e. running,
star-jumps, press-ups, stretching etc). This begs the question – what’s the
purpose of the warm-up?

My understanding of this question is that the warm-up
is designed to prepare the body for action by increasing the heart rate and
warming up the muscles. Well, I don’t need special exercises to increase my
heart rate – just doing karate does that. Also, my muscles are at a constant 37
degrees centigrade whether I’m exercising or not – it’s called body temperature.
So perhaps I’m trying to increase blood flow to the muscles rather than
increase their temperature…

Doesn’t it make more sense to increase the blood flow
to the muscles you’re actually going to use rather than a random selection of
them? I mean, if I’m going to punch and kick doesn’t it make sense to warm up
my punching and kicking muscles? I don’t need to isolate them out with special
exercises I just need to start punching and kicking – but more slowly and carefully until the blood flow has increased. If
the session is going to be mainly a throwing one will breakfalls warm me up
better than jogging and press-ups? If I’m doing a kata based session then
wouldn’t doing some kata warm me up best?

Runners run best when they warm up by jogging a couple of
rounds of the track. It has been advocated that weight trainers warm up by
lifting the empty bar or going through the range of weight exercises they
propose to do but without the weights first to warm up the correct muscles.
They should then add half the weight they want to lift and repeat the range of
movements before finally getting onto the full weight they intend to work with.

In other words, you warm-up best by getting on with the
activity you intend to be doing but at a slower and gentler pace until your
heart rate has increased and the blood flow to the correct muscles has
increased.

This makes more sense to me. I don’t feel I get any
real benefit from jumping and jogging around doing ‘warm-up’ exercises, despite
what conventional wisdom tells me. I’m
all for starting my karate sessions with a round of breakfalling, kihon, kata
or kumite – starting at a steady pace and increasing the intensity as I warm-up.

What about you? Do you swear by your warm-up routine or
does it just get in the way of doing your main activity?